The Sinkings of the Unsinkables > IDEAS & IDEALS

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 The recent change of political situations in the Soviet Union and the Communist countries in Eastern Europe is so large in its scale and so revolutionary in its nature that we feel not so much enthusiastic about its prospects as bewildered and even worried. It is simply too good to be true. It all came so fast and unexpectedly, and no savants and no experts in world affairs had predicted it until it came.

     I do not blame them for the ignorance. We all live in the bless and bliss of ignorance. We are all ignorant of the future. We just hope it will turn out good and for the better. And this time it turned out much better than we wished. Freedom - that expensive commodity - came to the East Berliners, to the Hungarians, to the Poles, to the Bulgarians, to the Czechs, to the Rumanians, to the Yugoslavians, overnight, magically, and more than anything else, peacefully. No gun-shots were heard. No blood-lettings were reported.

     Before this historically moving news, I feel we are all fooled. I feel we are all foolishly tricked, mocked at, and betrayed by history. Now we have to honestly admit that we are all fools before history. Looking at the jubilant crowds climbing up the Berlin Wall on television, and watching them shouting, singing, dancing, laughing, and weeping there where they would surely be shot to death until just yesterday, I pictured in my mind the grinning face of history making fun of all the foolish human ideas and futile human endeavors.

     The wall fell. That infamous Berlin Wall - a symbol of tyranny and confrontation - that had caused so much agony, death, fear, and tears - fell at last, within a minute. It fell so easily, so quickly, and so helplessly, as the mighty buildings tumble down in an earthquake.

     The fall of the Berlin Wall make our eyes turn, quite naturally, to the barbed-wire wall we have between the North and the South. We in the South, encouraged by the favorable wind blowing from the Eastern Europe, would like to expect and predict optimistically but cautiously that there will inevitably be some signs of thawing in the ever-frozen attitude of the North this time. But a series of recent talks with the North have proved once again that we are mistaken again. The wall we have is too high, too hard, and too thick to climb up, to pull or push down.

     I find many people in the South are deeply disappointed at the result of the talks to the point of genuine despair and anger. I hear them lament loudly and deplore bitterly over the hopelessness in our people more than before this time because they saw with their own eyes how gentlemanlikely the Europeans, especially the Germans, solve their problems and achieve their goal. I am afraid that some of us might do something terrible out of despair. Despaired man is often very dangerous.

     Now I feel I am obliged to do something for them. I feel I have to prevent them from committing suicide. By any means available, I think, I ought to comfort, console, or cheer them up. This is why I decided to tell the following three anecdotes about the ships that were so superbly-well made as to be considered "unsinkable" by everyone including the shipbuilding experts at the time. Reading stories, especially good stories, is often as very helpful as listening to good music in soothing one's troubled mind.

     In her day, Kronan was the largest ship in Sweden, probably in all of Europe. Weighing 2,350 tons, 200 feet long, and carrying 126 guns, she was the pride of Sweden's King Karl XI, and the most powerful warship ever afloat on the sea. In a naval battle against the combined Dutch and Danish fleet in 1676, Kronan made a sharp turn to face the enemy under full sail in a gusting wind. The maneuver was fatal to the fate of this magnificent ship. She simply capsized, exploding all her own magazines, and sank within a minute, along with some 800 men. She took seven years to build and less than a minute to destroy.

     The Titanic, the largest ocean-liner the world had ever known, sailed from Southampton, England, on her maiden voyage to New York on Wednesday, April 10, 1912. As high as 11-story building, 46,000 tons, 900 feet long, she was built with double bottoms, and her hull was divided into 16 water-tight compartments. Equipped with everything from palm verandas to Turkish baths, the Titanic was literally a floating hotel. She was considered nearly perfect. She was thought to be unsinkable. Yet, she collided with an iceberg and sank somewhere in the North Atlantic. Her maiden voyage had lasted exactly 4 days, 17 hours and 30 minutes.

     Adolf Hitler thought that he needed a behemoth in the sea to disrupt Allied convoys and end Britain's naval supremacy once and for all during World War II. Even Winston Churchill conceded that the 42,000-ton German battleship, Bismarck, which carried eight 15-inch guns and had a top speed of 30 knots, was a "masterpiece of naval construction." However, even before emerging as the terror and scourge to the Allies, the Bismarck became entangled with a British force in one of the World War II's most spectacular naval engagements, and was sunk on May 27, 1947, only 9 days after leaving on her first combat mission.

     Let me finish here. Do you feel better now? Have I amused you even a bit? No? O, come on. Don't be so obstinate. Cheer up. Man builds huge ships, high walls, strong fortifications, powerful dynasties, great empires with all human ingenuity, will, sweat, blood, and tears. But when time come, they just sink, crumble, fall, and disintegrate, instantly, helplessly, making completely nothing of the high passion and vaulting ambition, the long time and hard labor, the noble purpose and ardent hope devoted to building them all. When time comes.
          (April 21, 1992)